CLAN ELVES OF THE BITTERROOT: MAGIC MEETS THE MOUNTAINS

Here's something a little different for this week: A  peek at Lyndi Alexander's series.


If you were walking down the street and came across a real glass slipper, what would you do?

            This is the question Jelani Marsh faces, on a day when everything else that could go wrong has gone wrong. Her car’s been towed, she’s late for work, she’s had a fight with her ex-boyfriend—and then this glass slipper appears in her path. When her friend Iris dares her to try it on, she does. But it’s not exactly a prince that greets her:

            Iris climbed off the bike, put down the kickstand. “What is that?” She bent down near the object. “Oh, sweet Gaia! It’s a glass slipper!”
            No kidding. It really appeared to be a shoe made out of glass. A large one. “Who would have left this here?” Jelani picked it up, looking around for a prankster camera team. But something kept her from tossing it.
            “Try it on,” Iris whispered. “If you’re not chicken, anyway.”
            “Don’t even go there.”
            “Chicken. Bawk BAWK.” Iris giggled.
            “Fine! If it means I can get to work.” She reached down with her right hand and unzipped her boot, kicked it off. “Ready? You want a picture?”
            Iris dug for her cellphone and raised it, ready to take a shot. “Just in case your prince shows up right then.”
            Unbelievable. “I don’t need a prince. I don’t need a man! I need a new life.” Jelani set the shoe on the ground and slipped her foot in. She gently stepped down, not sure what she expected. The slipper shattered, slicing into the sole of her foot.
            Nauseous, Jelani screamed and could only watch in disbelief as tiny men sprang from the blood trickling under the broken shoe. She lost track of how many. The biggest maybe two inches high, they scattered into the shadows around the building next to them and disappeared. She lifted her foot, shaking off the remnants, and examined her foot to see if glass remained buried in her skin.
            “Did you…see that?” Iris gasped, nearly breathless. She grabbed at the wall, eyes closed a moment.
            Jelani felt faint, too, suddenly washed out. “I—I don’t know.” There were no fragments in her foot, or anywhere-- the shoe had vanished. The only trace of the whole incident was dark blood on the sidewalk, slowly drying in the sun. The cuts in her foot healed as she watched. What the hell?
            Iris knelt down to peer at Jelani’s foot. “There were little…people. Naked, hairless little people. They ran away. I swear they did.”
            “Did you get pictures?”
            “I almost forgot!” Iris got up and activated the screen on her cell, pressed the arrow. Jelani leaned close to watch the whole thing replay in living color. “Oh. Bless. My. God,” Iris said, in her shock reverting to the male deity.
            Jelani nodded. “And the horse He rode in on.”


            This event, depicted in The Elf Queen, triggers a change in Jelani’s life she never expected, as she learns that much of her past has been a lie, and she must delve into old family secrets, including the deaths of her parents, to find out the truth. Her few friends stand by her, oddballs and loners like she is, eventually becoming involved in a great adventure: the resolution of a twenty-five year civil war among a clan of elves who live in the mountains of the Bitterroot in western Montana.

            The Elf Child carries the story onward, as Jelani and her chosen mate, Astan Hawk, try to pull together the shreds of the elf clan, still in pieces after a political split over tradition. Those on the outside and those on the inside continue to skirmish, as forces within the clan itself scheme to have their way with their new young queen. Jelani must choose between her clan and her human friends, before she is lost forever:

            The moment Astan Hawk accepts his clan's challenge to protect the young Elf Queen Jelani, trouble dogs his heels. Jelani's human upbringing clashes with clan tradition, spurring dangerous intrigues within the Circle of Elders. Soon even the motives of Astan's father, Daven, come into question. With nowhere else to turn within the clan, Astan has no choice but to ask Jelani's human friends for help. But paranoid hermit Crispy, empathetic social worker Iris, and computer whiz Lane complicate Jelani's unexpected pregnancy and her attempts to rule the clan. And hiding in shadows, outcast Grigor Biren plots revenge for the loss of his mentor by seeking the help of powerful elf mages who live deep within the forest. Can Astan fulfill his promise to keep Jelani safe when the whole world seems to have turned against them?

            Book Three, THE ELF MAGE, begins as the clan is in disarray. The newborn prince is missing, the Circle of Elders scattered, and the queen and her mate are in hiding, unsure which side to trust.  Enter Jelani’s geek friend Lane Donatelli, a former foster home resident and online gamer, who is pulled into the conflict of the elves with his roommate Ron “Crispy” Mendell. Lane devises a plan, with the help of some clan members, to enlist the help of his online game persona, an eight-foot Orc named Xiomar. All he needs is a little magic to conjure him into the real world, and he’s sure the civil war’s tide will turn.

            Although things don’t quite turn out that way…

 


          The fourth book in the series, THE ELF GUARDIAN, will be out in 2013, and tells the story of what happens several years after the war, when a down-on-her-luck ghost hunter decides she’ll make her tv comeback studying the Montana Vortex—but finds the hidden elf clan instead. It will take all the magic—and cunning—the elves and humans can muster to save themselves from the kind of exposure that would destroy their peaceful world.


About Lyndi Alexander

Lyndi Alexander dreamed for many years of being a spaceship captain, but settled instead for inspired excursions into fictional places with fascinating companions from her imagination that she likes to share with others. She has been a published writer for over thirty years, including seven years as a reporter and editor at a newspaper in Homestead, Florida. Her list of publications is eclectic, from science fiction to romance to horror, from tech reporting to television reviews. Lyndi is married to an absent-minded computer geek. Together, they have a dozen computers, seven children and a full house in northwestern Pennsylvania.


Find out more about Lyndi Alexander and this series at http://lyndialexander.wordpress.com/the-clan-elves-of-the-bitterroot-series/ or http://clanelvesofthebitterroot.com/

Please feel free to ask questions about the books, characters, upcoming booksignings and anything else that fascinates you about the Clan Elves.

All Lyndi's books are available from Dragonfly Publishing, Inc., Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Smashwords, ITunes, Kobo.

Watch the book trailer for The Elf Queen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ASCJ8H5wO4